Comments:Individuality is a video with a somewhat unusual and amusing past- at least moreso than most of my other videos. This is because it was originally not my idea, but instead a friend's whom I asked and got permission to make the full video out of the idea.

The story, at least as it applies to me, begins last year at AWA (10 I believe, in 2004). Among the people I shared a room with at AWA was my friend and fellow AMV editor, Jeff Heller (gambitt). A bunch of us ended up sitting around the first night with nothing better to do, so we hooked up my laptop to the TV and started playing AMVs are random. Jeff was co-running a panel at the con, and dumped the contents of the disc of stuff he'd brought to the computer to show us one of the more amusing of the things he had to show us- a short, 3-4 second clip that was (at last count) going to be part of AMV Hell 3 : The Movie. It was a really funny clip of the horde of cats from one of Sakaki's dreams from Azumanga Daioh singing the opening line of Chesney Hawkes' "The One and Only". It was even funnier since my laptop's media player played it in a loop, over and over again.

After getting back from the con, I still had the clip on my laptop, and set out to find the full copy of the song, since I'd not heard it in some time. Upon finally finding it and listening through it, I though, "You know, this song in general would make a pretty good Azumanga Daioh video." I IM'd Jeff and asked if he'd have any objections to my trying to make a full video based on the short clip he'd made, and his response was "Sure, go ahead. Actually, I dare you to do it!". I put the idea out of mind for a few months, as I didn't even had the last of the AzuDaioh DVDs at that point. But when it came time to get started on whatever I was going to do for ACen, this video was the first thing that came to mind.

Unfortunately, I'll admit that I don't think the video follows what I perceive as being the true point/story of the song. I've not seen anything for certain to confirm this (no, I haven't really looked, either...), but listening through the song, it really sounds like it's about somebody joining the military and trying to keep their individuality from getting lost in the uniformity of the military. Yeah, I could be completely off-base on that, but it is what the song really comes off as meaning to me. In the video, I was aiming to highlight some of the internal struggles of the characters to match up with the lyrics. Osaka somewhat losing her identity other than being 'Osaka'., Kagura being deeper than the perception of her just being on of the idiots. Yomi seeming to get lost in the crowd- finding good scenes with her alone was appropriately hard. Tomo being overambitious. Chiyo-chan's dealing with not really belonging with anyone her own age anymore- this was actually one of the scenes I had in my head from the beginning when I first thought this would make a good video idea. Unfortunately I had thought there was a scene with her looking at her school uniform hanging up in her room, but if it was there, I totally couldn't find it. And of course, Sakaki and her issues with cute animals (yeah, doesn't totally fit- but I thought it worked well in the video). And, of course, craziness from Yukari and Nyamo.